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Tuesday, March 27, 2012

"Sister Citizen"

Melissa Harris-Perry

Between her popular column in the Nation, her show-stealing turns as a guest anchor on MSNBC and her willingness to jump into the digital fray, Melissa Harris-Perry is well on her way to being a household name.

Her astonishing new work, "Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America," spans more than a century of history and several decades of pop culture along with an in-depth survey of political thought. (Amazingly, Harris-Perry achieves all of this without becoming mired in jargon or turgid citations.) "Sister Citizen" will find its place with ambitious undergraduates gathered around a seminar table as well as members of book clubs chatting over margaritas.

The crux of Harris-Perry's argument is that the prevailing stereotypes of black women profoundly affect the ways that black women are seen by America, but also the ways that they see themselves. This misrepresentation shapes and often limits black women's participation as American citizens. While scholars may find some of the ground covered here to be a bit familiar, "Sister Citizen" is written for the benefit of all Americans - sister citizens, brother citizens and anyone else who cares about the way this country works.

"Sister Citizen" is difficult to classify, as it blends novel excerpts, poetry, focus-group transcripts, political analysis, tables, charts, photographs and a touch of speechifying. The title nod to Audre Lorde's audacious "Sister Outsider" lets us know that this is an author who is not afraid to have an opinion. The work's second subtitle, "For Colored Girls Who've Considered Politics When Being Strong Isn't Enough," isn't quite as raw as its inspiration, Ntozake Shange's groundbreaking choreopoem, "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf."

But perhaps it is Harris-Perry's goal to write with cool intention. Defying classification, "Sister Citizen" relies on literature, but is not as personal as literature. It uses focus-group statistics, but it is more individuated than sociology. There is political theory here, but this is not a political science textbook. I am not sure that there is yet a name for this type of work that manages to be diffuse yet intently focused.

Harris-Perry's focus is on the lived experience of black women, but also the ways that black women are perceived by America. Her exploration of the images of black women in the wake of Hurricane Katrina is exhaustive and sometimes a little exhausting. In addition, she casts an unflinching eye at the Duke University lacrosse case, the R. Kelly trial and other hot-button subjects that will no doubt spark conversations around many a dinner table.

Melissa Harris-Perry

Perhaps because of the timing of the publication, there is a 500-pound pop-culture gorilla in the room that does not make it into the text: the blockbuster film "The Help." Harris-Perry's Twitter followers and viewers of MSNBC were witnesses to her outrage over the depiction of black women who worked as maids in the Jim Crow South. On television and in the twitterverse, she decried the lack of historical context in the feel-good film. She also argued that the way that black women see themselves was not truly addressed.

If this is the case, "Sister Citizen" serves as an antidote to "The Help." In her discussion of the Mammy stereotype, Harris-Perry provides a particularly astute analysis of why the enduring image is so offensive. Unlike the loud-mouthed Sapphire and promiscuous Jezebel, Mammy embodies many positive attributes - she is kind, nurturing and capable in the kitchen. Indeed, many of the women in Harris-Perry's study embrace these characteristics. What they reject is the idea that these traits that they so value about themselves are seen as benefits for families not their own.

In this terrain lies the irony of "Sister Citizen." Cited early on is Kate Rushin's "The Bridge Poem," in which the speaker laments the role of go-between. "I've got to explain myself/ To everybody/ I do more translating/ Than the Gawdamn U.N./ Forget it/ I'm sick of it."

Yet "Sister Citizen" engages in as much translation and explanation. This is hard work, and Harris-Perry is more than up to the task. As a black woman myself, I am repeatedly stopped by curious strangers who want to know if I loved "The Help" as much as they did. In the past, weary of explaining, I have avoided the conversation altogether. In the future, I will simply proffer my copy of "Sister Citizen." (source: San Francisco Gate)

From The New York Times , "Words From the Past Illuminate a Station on the Way to Freedom: Eric Foner Revisits Myths of the Un...

Capoeira

African Martial Arts of Brazil

About the Banjo by Tony Thomas

The banjo is a product of Africa. Africans transported to the Caribbean and Latin America were reported playing banjos in the 17th and 18th centuries, before any banjo was reported in the Americas. Africans in the US were the predominant players of this instrument until the 1840s.

Charleston Slave Tags and Slave Badges

Badge laws existed in several Southern cities, urban centers such as Mobile and New Orleans, Savannah and Norfolk; the practice of hiring out slaves was common in both the rural and urban South. But the only city known to have implemented a rigid and formal regulatory system is Charleston.

MANILLA: MONEY OF THE SLAVE TRADE

Manilla. Manillas were brass bracelet-shaped objects used by Europeans in trade with West Africa, from about the 16th century to the 1930s. They were made in Europe, perhaps based on an African original.Once Bristol entered the African trade, manillas were made locally for export to West Africa.

SLAVE CURRENCY: African Slave Trade Beads

In Africa, trade beads were used in West Africa by Europeans who got them from Venice, Holland, and Bohemia. They used millions of beads to trade with Africans for slaves, services, and goods such as palm oil, gold, and ivory. The trade with Africans was so vital that some of the beads were made specifically for Africans.

Slave Trade Currency: Cowry Shells

Long before our era the cowry shell was known as an instrument of payment and a symbol of wealth and power. This monetary usage continued until the 20th century. If we look a bit closer into these shells it is absolutely not astonishing that varieties as the cypraea moneta or cypraea annulus were beloved means of payments and eventually became in some cases huge competitors of metal currencies.

Bunce Island Slave Factory

Cannons with the Royal Crest

Adanggaman

Africans Making Slaves of Africans

Ota Benga The Man in the Bronx Zoo

Ota Benga (1883-1916) was an African Congolese Pygmy, who was put on display in the monkey house at the Bronx Zoo in New York in1906

Railroads and Slave Labor

North America's four major rail networks — Norfolk Southern, CSX, Union Pacific and Canadian National — all own lines that were built and operated with slave labor.

Sculptor Augusta Savage

"Lift every voice and sing" by Augusta Savage: New York World's Fair.

Afro-Uruguay Spirit of Resistance in Candombe

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W.E.B. DuBois

"It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." -- W.E.B. DuBois

Slave Tortures

Portugal Slave Trade

1501-1866 Portugal transported 5,848,265 people from Africa to the Americas.

French Slave Trade

1501-1866 France transported 1,381,404 Africans to America.

Great Britain Slave Trade

1501-1866 The British transported 3,259,440 Africans to the Americas.

Spain Slave Trade

1501-1866 Spain transported 1,061,524 Africans to the Americas

Denmark Slave Trade

1501-1866 Denmark transported 111,041 people from Africa.

United States Slave Trade

1501-1866 The USA transported 305,326 Africans to the Americas.

Netherlands Slave Trade

"To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?" — Marcus Tullius Cicero